18 Months

Next week I officially complete 18 months. Good thing I'm not a girl or I would be going home. I feel like I am finally learning how to really teach investigators effectively. I remember how when I was with my trainer and we would do role play lessons during our companionship studies. Elder Erikson would tell me to start teaching a lesson to him on some principle. In one instance he told me to teach him a lesson on "The Fall of Adam and Eve" and I would sit there thinking what in the world to say. A few times I just looked at him and said "I can´t...I have no idea of what to say or teach!" I now realize how much patience Elder Erikson had hahaha. 

It is really a tough skill to be an effective teacher. I have learned that to be a good teacher as a missionary is to let the spirit guide you and to help the investigator feel that spirit through our words or lack of words. When there is a period of silence after an inspired question, a lot of times that is when the spirit can testify to the investigator the strongest. 

We had a cool experience this past week with an investigator named Fernando. He"s a middle aged guy who sells tea, coffee, and hot chocolate on a bike every day. He works on Sunday, but sometimes he takes an hour off to come to church. He is an awesome guy and I know one day he'll get baptized. We didn't even plan on teaching "The Sabbath Day", but he set himself up. He started talking to us about how Mexico is suffering so much and how people focus so much on temporal things and not on spiritual things. He asked us why we thought the people have lost their values and the world wasn't the same as it used to be. I know the spirit guided me and I started talking about the Sabbath day. Nobody keeps the Sabbath day here in Nochixtlan. It's the big market day here every Sunday. We talked about how God blesses us physically and spiritually through the obedience of keeping the Sabbath day holy. That is why the situation in Oaxaca has so much poverty because they don't obey this commandment. We went on to have a great lesson with Fernando. 

This week we changed houses! It was pretty tiring moving everything out, because we have a TON of stuff. Ever since they closed the other area here in Nochixtlan we've been crammed in our tiny house with all the stuff. That was the main reason that we moved. The new house is a lot bigger and we really enjoy the closed in outside patio area that we have. We have peach and pomegranate trees! We also hung Christmas lights. Christmas in august :)

Have a great end of summer and enjoy the Olympics. Keep me updated ;) I might not be able to write next Monday because its going to be transfer day and transfer day is always crazy.

Love y'all,

-Elder Smith